Jonah/Krystle: Not Exactly in the "Never Going Back" category, but...

 ... I've probably pretty close to waiting my last table for a while.

(You thought I meant the Inn, didn't you?  Well, that too, but...)

It's not that I had a bad experience at the Changeling - Moira is still my best friend and Ashlyn is sometimes the only person I can talk to when the feeling of being a huge phony comes over me - though I know that there are a lot of people who were pretty badly exploited in that business.  I'm lucky that Moira, having grown up in her parents' pub in Ireland, brought the idea that servers should be paid a living wage here with her and it's one of the conditions she had on partnering with Ashlyn to open the place.  Lord knows others haven't been so lucky.  Still, they could only pay an hourly wage and shifts were relatively scarce until very recently, especially if you don't have a car with which to do delivery, since it took a while to be at 100% capacity and that means both fewer people working and fewer people to tip per person.  On top of that, tipping has become a real all-or-nothing situation lately:  The folks who demanded that restaurants be open in the middle of a pandemic are lousy tippers, while the folks who are easing their way back into it to the point where they don't take their mask off until they're ready to take their first bite will regularly hit 25-30%.

I'd been picking up what I could when I got a call from the gym, mentioning that they were re-opening and if I'd like to renew my membership.  I wasn't facing the nagging sensation of getting out of shape that Jordan was - you can't slow down that much with an energetic four-year-old - but I wanted to get back to climbing pretty badly.  Sadly, I told them, I couldn't really afford it right now.

I got the feeling that they'd heard that a few times from the sigh on the other end, but then the lady on the other end surprised me by first asking if I was vaccinated and then if I'd like to apply for a job.  I kind of laughed, saying I'd only been climbing for a few months before the pandemic hit, but she said that was good enough for making sure people were strapped into their harnesses properly and, besides, they'd probably start me at the front desk anyway.

So I applied, and I've got an interview tomorrow.  In a week or two, I could be doing that on a regular schedule and even getting benefits.  And the regular schedule sounds pretty good, especially if I can work it around school hours in a couple of months.

That's right, school - Little Moira turned four years old in January, and in Cambridge that means that she is eligible for "junior kindergarten" starting this fall.  And that whole experience has been kind of crazy!  Just forget that I technically never finished high school and it kind of feels like I should have some sort of graduation behind me before having my kid start, but the fact is that I grew up in a fairly small town with one elementary school, so it was one-size fits all, but here there's a lottery and you're expected to make decisions about what direction a four-year-old's life is going to be set on.

It's nuts!  More nuts for me, because if faced with the same decisions, my parents certainly wouldn't have had any way to know that they should prepare their baby boy for being a single mother that everyone thinks used to be a stripper, and here I am, trying to figure out what I want for my little girl even though I know there's just no predicting where life will take her.  It feels so random at times that I can see why some people are tempted to just take care of now and put their kids in the most conveniently located school.

I'm trying not to do that, though.  I suspect that our applications were all kinds of a mess but that it really doesn't matter that much, since I intend to be involved and attentive and all that.  Still, there will be chances to switch things up when we get a better idea of her interests than "she really likes Legos so maybe she'll be an engineer someday."  I'm a little disappointed that she got wait-listed for the Mandarin-immersion program, and hope it's not some "why would a lower-income black girl need to know that?" thing.  Maybe it is a silly bit of ambition I'm putting on her, but Jordan says that languages like that are a lot easier to learn if you start young, and it seems like the sort of thing grown-up Moira could use in 2035.

Listen to me.  2035.  I'm trying to make decisions that will affect another person's life in 2035, when I got here by just falling into a situation randomly and then making one desperate decision that had the exact opposite effect that I intended.  But I guess that's why I'll probably never be going back to the Inn, at least not before 2040 or whenever she graduates college, because it's entirely possible that she may wind up with someone somehow even more ill-suited to all this than me!

-Jonah/Krystle

Daryl/Magda: Planning for futures

The virus closing the Inn for a year has been downright peculiar - this time last year, I was fretting over being stuck as Magda and losing myself, and I think I had a little bit of a breakdown not long after my last post.  It's the sort of thing I always figured I'd be more sure of, but instead it only became clear in reflection.  J.T. had taken a job shooting some small independent film, and while I'd planned to join him, I got kind of freaked about the virus, never got on my flight, and instead turned that week into a "staycation" where I spent a lot of time in bed eating ice cream and watching Netflix, barely got dressed, and spent a lot of time freaking out because new-Daryl took a while to get back to me when I asked how things were going and seldom had questions.  It seemed perfectly reasonable at the time, especially when the time off ended, my alarm rang, and I put on my uniform and went to work like the past week had just never happened.

And here's the weird thing:  I was more centered after.  Things didn't rattle me as much, and having my planned new life fall through got me to a point where I guess I accepted that I would live my live out as Magda Polawski and was less worried about the real me showing through.  I hadn't really been hiding, but I think I'd tried too hard to show I wasn't a boring middle-aged woman around J.T.'s friends and not to be weird around the people at work, and just doing what I wanted felt like a weight off my shoulders.  This wasn't the life I'd planned, but it was a pretty decent one.  I have someone I love, I have friends, I know that the world is a little more remarkable than most people understand.  Even under weird circumstances, my job was steady and I got to help people most of the time.

Apparently, it showed up in my performance.  I don't know much about the original Magda, but I kind of get the impression that she was dedicated enough to herself and Alicia to pick up extra shifts but that was the end of it, at least at work, and Lindsey was just killing time until she could be herself again.  That's not really me, though, so I'd help the new people, show up a bit early or stay a bit late if needed, and, I don't know, engage more?  So by the time I was working an extra shift on Thanksgiving weekend, a little freaked about how too many people were traveling but doing my best to make it work, I wasn't really worried about being laid off when I was called into an office.

It turns out, I was being offered a promotion.

It's weird for an Inn Person(tm)!  Like, I've known several that have quit jobs or changed paths to something more suited, and some weird relationship situations, but being told that I am actually better at some parts of being a middle-aged white lady than an actual middle-aged white lady?  It's mighty disconcerting, but not actually bad, once I considered that my priorities clearly aren't the same as Magda's were, and that some of it was probably because I'm not entirely a MAWL - ability to connect with multiple generations makes me a better leader.  Send your management candidates to the Trading Post, corporations - they'll get a ton of new insights!

Anyway, I'm not a spiritual person, but I do kind of wonder if finally settling in as Magda, accepting that I could see a life as someone other than myself, has made the universe more willing to smile upon me, because Pete found me another candidate for a new life.  Zee's in her early 30s, presumably mixed (clearly Black but lighter than either Elaine or I was), in nice shape, and pretty much a blank slate - her parents aren't in the picture, and she's between jobs but has some savings.  I initially said he should just settle down that way, but it's almost like having the same DNA for two years after spending so long living other people's lives has made him antsy, like he wants some guardrails even though he's unmistakably Pete no matter what face he wears.

I downloaded the pictures to my phone and showed them to J.T., asking if he'd break up with me for her, and bless him, he recognized what I meant right away, especially once I said there was no reason for "her" not to move to New York.  I made a joke about how maybe I could use my new position to recommend her to the airline, and he said he didn't necessarily want people to think he had a thing for airport workers, and, besides, it was a chance for me to get back to doing what I'm good at.

(And then he showed that he still found this shape attractive, thank you!)

I told Pete yes, and we've been exchanging emails.  She seems nice, and has a clean bill of health, but I don't know everything about the real her, though I don't need to.  I get the impression that she's white and younger than Zee from some of her emails, like she's always enjoyed being looked at but it's not necessarily the same when she goes to her favorite places as a Black woman, and from how she was kind of stunned that I'd basically accepted losing 20 years.  Still, from what I can tell, I could enjoy being her.

It does mean making plans not to leave Magda's life a mess, though.  I've put in vacation time for August, and I'm trying to figure out how to stay cordial with the folks I know (they're good friends, by and large) but not actually commit "myself" to anything that next-Magda wouldn't necessarily want to be part of.  I've also been looking at apartments, and holy shit, but New York rent is insane!  I thought the old place in Oakland was crazy for what it was, but New York City is a different level, and that's just basically pretending like much of Manhattan doesn't exist.  Staying in J.T.'s nice place for the past three years has kept me kind of isolated from that, but there's a good chance that next-Magda might find herself in Jersey, because even if I might be happy with a cozy one-bedroom, she may be bringing someone else along, and I don't want her to feel like this life is a prison with no room for the rest of her.

Because it's not, even if I am looking forward to having two shoulders with a full range of motion again.  Being Magda for three years has been a bit of a test, but it's not something one needs to get past.

-Magdaryl

Jordan/Yuan-Wei: Pandemic Pounds

Huh, it looks like everybody just sort of laid off at some point last year.  Can't blame them' the Inn apparently didn't open at all last summer, and at a certain point, when you're staying in and taking all the appropriate precautions - and I suspect that once you've been through the Trading Post Inn experience, it's really fucking hard to say that the odds are against anything bad happening to you - there's not much to talk about on this blog.  Oh, sure, there's your "regular" life, but to the extent you're talking about that online, you're doing it on Instagram or some other social media app or just a group text, and I'll be damned if I'm going to write about the same thing multiple times.

So why am I here?  Well, I gather the Inn is opening for Memorial Day, and that means there's going to be a new Chen-Ai soon, and I've got no idea what to expect from that.  They're not going to be a mother figure for me of any sort, of course, but the very fact that there will be someone in that spot means that all the people who may have thought something was suspicious a year and a half ago but either lost interest or couldn't spare resources to dig are going to get interested again.  I'm not looking forward to that, and I kind of wonder if anyone else is in the same situation.

Mostly, though, I'm sort of trying to figure out what it's like to be Yuan-Wei again.  Like I said back in October, working from home and not going out and being social got me back into a lot of pre-Inn habits, especially with food.  I know I'm not alone in this among people who have been able to work from home, but I had a lot of days where work wasn't necessarily holding all of my attention, but I didn't want to just walk away from my workstation, and the kitchen is the closest room to the home office, so I'd get myself a snack or a soda three or four times a day.  That didn't really happen when I was Dierdre - something about her body just rejected eating too much viscerally - and I think some of the memories of feeling like absolute shit when I tried to eat too much carried over into being Yuan-Wei.  Then I kind of liked the way I looked, and had the sort of metabolism I would have killed for back in my first life, but I guess it's been slowing down even as I started living that way again.

Not that I got fat the way the old me did - women's jeans will tell you that you've put on weight and the yoga isn't cutting it - but I guess I found myself accepting it more as the pandemic dragged on, since it would be weeks until I was with other people regularly and going up a size was no big deal.  I went up and down a bit over the winter, and wound up being "up" a bit when we started coming back to the office.  I wasn't going to wear a crop-top or anything, but I had enough of a muffin top going on that I made sure I wore a top that covered it, and when we went out for drinks afterward, I couldn't help but notice that there were certainly women my age who hadn't let themselves go at all.

It's frustrating, because I know it's stupid to feel this way.  I've been fat, and this isn't the same feeling, but I also know that even when I stood no fucking chance, I'd look past girls who just had a couple extra pounds like I do right now.  Plus, I like being hot; it's fucking gratifying to know you look great in a bikini or naked and that people will put out some effort to have sex with you.  I don't entirely mind that I'm going to have to put a little more effort into it for a while (as long as it doesn't involve that running bullshit), but I sort of feel like I should have learned a lesson or have some perspective after all of this that makes it all make sense, you know?

-Jordo

Jonah/Krystle: Not Essential

I've been thinking I maybe should write something about the whole stay-at-home thing for the last month and a half, but it's been hard to get started.  It seems like I've got nothing but time now, but that's not the case.

As you might guess, I'm unemployed right now.  I'm technically "furloughed", which I guess means I've got a job waiting for me when the restaurant is back up to something closer to capacity, but that's not any kind of given itself.   To the extent that is still operating, it's because Ashlyn and Moira are working in the kitchen and making deliveries themselves without drawing a salary.   There ain't enough seats to have a bartender and two waitresses working I'd they open up at half capacity, so it'shard to put to much hope in that.

So I've been home, and on the one hand, Little Moira loves that.  We have a great time playing together, and reading.   She's only three, so she can't read yet, but she's got a lot of her favorites memorized, which is kind of amazing itself.  Momma Kamen and my folks say that neither of us were that into books at that age, but we were never locked down or anything like that.  It kind of males me worried that there's some of the man who knocked me up in her, but nobody who knows thinks it works that way.

She misses her cousins, though, and her friends from the park, and it's hard to explain to her that we can only talk to them on the laptop, especially since Momma Kamen still goes to work, if not for quote so many shifts.  It seems backward to me, because she's in her fifties and probably had more that makes her vulnerable than I do, but the MBTA obviously can't just let me take her job.  It means she does all the errands before and after work, so there's really not much reason for me to go out at all.

And I'm lucky in that way, I guess.  Karla is calling to check in on her mother fairly often, and her kids are sad about not being able to see their grandmother, plus all the drama that comes with their fathers in a time like this.  My own folks are keeping in touch a little more often, but the question of going to stay with them is something we kind of dance around.  There aren't any cases in their town, and someone coming from the big city to visit would be an issue.

And I guess I'm lucky, in a way, that I've accepted this as my life.  Hotels aren't opening in Maine until June at least, and there are some people who probably thought they were getting their lives back this weekend.

Anyway, just wanted anyone I haven't been keeping in touch with off the blog to know I'm okay.

-Jonah/Krystle